Data sovereignty is definitely a bigger issue than many people realize.

Data sovereignty is definitely a bigger issue than many people realize. It’s important to know where your sensitive business data lives, and what that means to you in terms of being able to protect it!

Large enterprises that embrace cloud computing for many tasks still refuse to use public cloud infrastructure for key jobs because of what they see as restrictive data sovereignty regulations.

These laws, which are proliferating in countries around the world, according to attendees of this week’s Forecast 2012 event in New York, mandate that a company keep a customer’s data in that customer’s home country. One oft-cited reason is to prevent that data from being subpoenaed by a foreign power (read: the U.S.)

And that factor is the biggest difference between an enterprise’s virtualized data center and a public infrastructure as a service, said Matt Louth, principal security architect for the National Australia Bank.

Multiple regulations governing where a company can store customer data means that multinationals have to field data centers in every country where they have a presence — a trend that flies in the face of the appeal…